One In Jesus

XI. Why can’t an established church have the same success as a church plant?

A. Established churches have many advantages

1. A building. Church plants have to rent space, with all the obvious inconveniences.

2. Elders and deacons

3. Lots of members

4. Children’s and teen programs

B. But they have disadvantages Continue reading →

IX. Church plants have been shown to work.

A. By “church plant” I mean a team of 15 to 20 or so who go to a city and start a church. “Domestic missionary team” may be a more helpful term.

B. The people who run these programs have tried many things, some of which work and some of which fail. But they’ve now found approaches that have an over 80% success rate. Indeed, most plants are self-supporting in 5 years or less — and planting daughter churches.

C. Church plants often convert more people in 3 years than we convert (other than our own children) in 20!

D. What do they do that works, even in communities with few Christians, often where people are very hostile to Christianity? Continue reading →

[This is an outline for class teachers at my church. Although some of the material is from other recent posts, most of it’s brand new, especially toward the end. It’s designed for teaching at all churches that have covered the background material on grace.

I’m convinced that the solution to the declining numbers in the Churches of Christ is (a) planting domestic churches and (b) turning our established churches into church plants. Here’s how I plan to teach it.]

I. Quail Springs Church of Christ

A. Had 900 members a year ago.

B. It declined to 600 members after the elders announced the addition of a second service which would be instrumental.

C. After the local paper, the Daily Oklahoman (statewide circulation) ran a story, two small churches in Oklahoma and Texas ran a full page ad (cost of $12,000 or so) disfellowshipping their pulpit minister, Mark Henderson.

D. A second ad to similar effect was run by some other churches a few weeks later. (About $24,000 spent on embarrassing the church in the media, which will usually gladly do that for free!!)

E. Meanwhile, not a single Oklahoma congregation stood in solidarity with Quail Springs. Some announced that they’d not paid for the ads or even that it was wrong to run the ads, but none stated that they accept Quail Springs in full communion. Continue reading →